My thoughts about XXX product development

Ron Liu

Feb, 2011

➢ Quality Story➢ My Comment➢ Some Suggestions

Quality Story

Quality Story(1):Quality Story(1):Infineon planed to apply ADMtek's EtherInfineon planed to apply ADMtek's Ether --net switch chip to automotive.net switch chip to automotive.

➢ A new project for fab migration from Charter in Singapore to its own fab where its produc-tion process had been qualified.

➢ Design porting with industrial grade quality requirement.

➢ New Qualification plan.➢ Estimate cost ~2MEuro in around 1 year.

Quality Story(2): Quality Story(2): InfineonInfineonAutomotive Quality Program, On the Way to Automotive Quality Program, On the Way to Zero-Defect Products and Services.Zero-Defect Products and Services.

➢ Target of Zero Defect means: ➔ No quality events ➔ Defect-free product launches ➔ Automotive product quality of 0 failed parts per mil-

lion➔ Low non-conformance costs➔ Highest quality image in your market➔ More business due to satisfied customers ➔ 4 pillars: people, products, processes and production

➔ In five years the ppm rate for our automotive products decreased by more than 80 % down to less than 0.2 ppm

➔ Ref: www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/applications/automotive/living-automotive-excellence/

Quality Story(3): NASAQuality Story(3): NASAOut-of-memory problem caused Mars Out-of-memory problem caused Mars rover's glitchrover's glitch

A shortage of memory on board the Spirit Mars rover is what caused it to become unresponsive on the Martian surface on Jan. 22, raising fears that the Martian mission might end almost before it began in earnest.

Mike Deliman, a technical staff member at Wind River Systems Inc., which provided the real-time embedded operating system used in the mission, said the problem has been re-created in testing on Earth and appears to be entirely memory-related.

"It's not a software bug, it's not an application bug, and it's not a hardware bug," Deliman said. "It's a system constraint that we ran up against."

The Spirit rover dedicates 32MB of its 128MB of RAM to the onboard Wind River VxWorks operating system and a host of sci-ence applications, and as the mission progresses, technicians are scheduled to periodically delete old files and directories to clear out the memory for reuse, he said.

But with all the excitement after the Mars landing on Jan. 3, and with data being returned to Earth by the rover, that step was not performed quickly enough by mission technicians.

"We just ran out of memory, ran out of RAM," Deliman said. "This is why we initially lost contact" with the rover. The six-wheeled vehicle runs hundreds of tasks simultaneously in normal operations, with each operation using its own chunk of RAM, he said.

The VxWorks operating system was embedded in a specially prepared, radiation-hardened 20-MHz PowerPC CPU installed on each of the rovers, along with 128MB of RAM (see story). The hardware was cutting-edge back when it was chosen in the mid-1990s, but then it had to be treated to ensure its reliability in the radiation of deep space -- a process that takes five to 10 years..... For about a week, scientists worked to figure out why the rover wasn't responding to commands from Earth and feared that a hardware problem could halt the rover in its tracks.

Technicians were eventually able to correct the problem when the rover went into a diagnostic mode, Deliman said. Diagnostic commands were beamed up to the machine, and a series of files and folders were deleted from a flash-memory-based file sys-tem board, allowing the rover to resume normal operations.

Ref: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/89829/Out_of_memory_problem_caused_Mars_rover_s_glitch?taxonomyId=013

Quality Story(4): ToyotaQuality Story(4): Toyota【技術講座】豐田出了什麼問題？——專家的看法【技術講座】豐田出了什麼問題？——專家的看法

全面驗證！豐田的全球召回事件 http://big5.nikkeibp.com.cn/news/auto/50073-20100209.html豐田出了什麼問題？——專家的看法 http://big5.nikkeibp.com.cn/news/auto/auto/50761-20100330.html

Quality Story(4): ToyotaQuality Story(4): Toyota【技術講座】豐田出了什麼問題？——專家【技術講座】豐田出了什麼問題？——專家的看法的看法

Quality Story(4): ToyotaQuality Story(4): Toyota【技術講座】豐田出了什麼問題？——專家【技術講座】豐田出了什麼問題？——專家的看法的看法

My Comments(1)My Comments(1)

➢ Product increasingly becoming more and more complex, because of marketing requirement, changing technology and high integration system.

➢ Quality assurance complicated and costly, ex Toyota's Prius hybrid global recall. What we can learn from Japan? Like auto maker, more and more electronic devices and SW included in product.

➢ Thinking Value and image of MIT vs made in China, made in Japan, made in Germany.

Challenge

Global market

Position of MIT product

My Comments(2)My Comments(2)

➢ What level of quality we are pursing?we are building Mars Rover, automotive, NB, or toys?

➢ Trade-off, balance amongCost=f(Performance, Time, Scope)

➢ Risk-Assessment, ManagementIn auto maker's calculation, even cost of human life was included, sounds ugly! Are we taking the risk or evaluate it? What is the real cost?

➢ Toyota, Apple, Nintendo:not so called high-tech company, but they de-livered good product.

Quality Requirement

Trade-off

Risk

Successfulproduct

My Experience

My Experience(1)My Experience(1)

➢ Development Cycle and Resource: Concept, Design, Implementation(Coding), Test-ing/Validation(QA)(>1/3 of development sched-ule which we usually tend to underestimate).

➢ Bad practice: RD == Implementation (bricklaying in construc-tion industry), other activities are minor or ne-cessary evil. Recruiting of IC verification engin-eer difficult since people just don't recognize it, same situation in SW QA.

➢ Method and Process:India/Germany engineers are good at presenta-tion on the methodology and outcome delivered, but TW not. Are we 土法煉鋼？ Labor intense test or automated regression test?

Resource allocation

Organization

Methodology

My Experience(2)My Experience(2)

➢ In IC design field:Design for customer needs, Concept of system application. Arch./concept/Algorithm design for performance or function partition, Design for manufacturing, Design for test, Robust design, Design for re-use, Design for low power. HW-SW concurrent design. Modeling, Stress test

➢ Constraints:Chip cost, timing, resource, standard compli-ance, fab technology, high development NRE cost, long re-spin turn-around time.

➢ Validation:Chip verification, Package Qualification, BSP, OS bring-up, ref system design validation (func-tion, endurance, throughput).

DesignActivity

Design Constraints

Chip PCB, HW FW, SWSystem

My Experience(3)My Experience(3)

➢ Discrete component, key ICs, sub-mod-ule, assembly parts/material selection and qualification, SW/UI/HMI design, enclosure package design, mechanical design, thermal design, system reliabil-ity, regulation.

➢ FA is a highly complex process while investigating samples from QA rejec-tion or low yield or customer return where different domains knowledge, ex. material, chemistry, physics..etc, and highly skilled people are required.

System house

Failure analysis

My Experience(4)My Experience(4)

➢ QM is at corporate level in terms of policy and exe-cution.

➢ Embedded into company process.➢ Not only product itself, but also attitude and

behavior about how people are working together and making decision.

➢ Identify quality requirements at very beginning of project kick-off and follow up through whole devel-opment cycle.

➢ One dedicated project member for quality manage-ment in the core-team.

➢ Independent chip verification team for test case design, generation and verification task.

➢ Independent system qualification lab.➢ Use external lab for regulation or std compliance

certification, if necessary.➢ QA/QC lab for engineering tasks.

QualityManagementSystemIn Infineon

Beyond design team

My Experience(5)My Experience(5)

QM tools ➢ Tool is just tool.➢ People: A culture and mindset of com-

mitment to deliver high quality product.

➢ Just name a few I heard of➢ FMEA

(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_mode_and_effects_analysis)

➢ 6-sigma➢ KT problem solving. decision making ➢ The Toyota Way (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way)

➢ Quality management(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_management)

➢And many other....Though, I am not a quality expert.

Some Suggestions

Team SetupTeam Setup

DevelopmentTeam

➢ Encourage engineer team to cultivate learning capability and desire to be good and great, to develop awareness and sense of flat world.

➢ Respect for people and their professional know-ledge. Talent recruit and retain are critical.

➢ Identify and raise team core competence across global sites. Balance in resource allocation.

➢ Establish project management system by leader-ship across function teams for collaboration and synergy.

➢ Project core team is fully responsible for product, never support-only mindset, commit-ment for product lunch and quality.

Development PracticesDevelopment PracticesDesignDesign

Top-downBottom-upConcurrent

Architecture

PlatformDesign

➢ Design and Implementation➢ Top-down design: requirement, performance

and cost.➢ Bottom-up implementation: build from

foundation and QA during construction.➢ Concurrent design: ex application sw in virtual

environment before HW ready.

➢ System design➢ Block partition, high level (algorithm)

simulation, platform and interface definition.

➢ Either in HW or SW➢ external IP QA flow, IP reuse, component and

material decision.➢ Alignment with product road-map and

technology road-map

Development PracticesDevelopment PracticesDesign ReviewDesign Review

DesignReview

Circuit/CodeReview

Integration

➢ Review before implementation to en-sure requirement, function, interface, algorithm is correct for each design block.

➢ Ensure design guide line, design rule(for design quality, QA std or man-ufacturing), discipline have been fol-lowed.

➢ Flow for design block verification be-fore check-in and integration test.

Development PracticesDevelopment PracticesVerification and QAVerification and QA

Verification

QAFA

FAE

➢ Independent test/verification/QA lab ➢ test plan, test case design and automated test➢ test environment development and set-up➢ work closely with design team from function,

module to end product performance and stress test .

➢ QA Lab ➢ qualification of component, material, PCB...➢ audit of in-house and outsourcing development➢ end product qualification with std/regulation

procedure and environment.➢ FA engineering capability

➢ FAE ➢ work closely with FAE team for field product

usage data collection and customers feedback

Development PracticesDevelopment PracticesToolingTooling

Tools

RapidPrototype &Test

Mindset

➢ Maintain company-wide std tools for development, ex HW SW tool chain.

➢ Group ware on intranet(ex version con-trol, info share site) for info/doc shar-ing, alignment and learning

➢ For ex. NI Labview➢ graphical programming, is a good tool for rapid

prototype and product test.

➢ Use or make tool for productivity➢ Not driven by tools

Development PracticesDevelopment PracticesSome product ideasSome product ideas

HMI

RemoteService

➢ Human factor engineering is a critical factor in product design.

➢ iPad or like product ~$500(retail price) may be a good choice.

➢ Remote diagnostic, logging, fixed or upgrade through internet to save main-tenance cost for commercial product.

Reference (1)Reference (1)BooksBooks

Developmentmanagement&SW QA

➢ e 世紀軟體開發術 - 從軟體開發看科技管理 (UNDER PRESSURE & ON TIME, Ed Sullivan, Microsoft Press) ，華彩軟體出版 , 2001. [start-up practice w/o theory, practices about tools for SW version control, issue tracking, re-lease control] [today, complexity of SW >> HW]

➢ 現代嵌入式系統開發專案實務－菜鳥成長日誌與專案經理的私房菜 . 邱毅凌 . 知迅科技出版 , 2007.[tips and methodology for embedded system de-velopment, the best book by TW author in this field in my view]

Reference (2)Reference (2)Vision of JapanesesVision of Japaneses